FAQ

The daily Read is free for everyone, every trading day, no account needed. A free account adds six months of price history on every cut, a watchlist with price alerts that syncs across your devices, and the Weekly Meat Read in your inbox. News, the USDA calendar, and the public scorecard are free too. Pro, $49 a month or $490 a year, unlocks the movers behind the Read, the full price history, the supply side (packer margin, weekly kill, cold storage, trade flows), forecasts on every chart, and the desk tools: Grind & Trim, Primals, Feature Activity, Quota Watch, Poultry Desk, Landed Cost.

Yes. Every price on the site is a public USDA print, and you can pull the PDFs yourself. What you pay for is the work between the PDF and the decision: every daily and weekly report joined into one board the same evening it files, a written read on what moved and why, the history behind every cut, and the supply side lined up against price. The prints are free; the morning is not.

Fourteen days. You enter a card through Stripe to start, but nothing is charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel any time before then from your account. One trial per person. The checkout page shows the exact amount, currency, and tax before you confirm; the currency switch on the boards only changes how prices display.

Yes, from your account through the Stripe billing portal. No contract. Access runs to the end of the period you have paid for, monthly or annual, and the subscription does not renew. Completed billing periods are not refunded. Full cancellation, refund, and price-change language is on the Terms page.

Once per trading day, as the USDA afternoon close publishes. The numbers start filing around 4 PM ET and the card settles as the last reports land, usually by about 5:30 PM ET. That finished card stays on the board overnight, so it is what you read with morning coffee, and it is what the 6 AM ET daily email carries. Nothing new prints overnight, so there is no separate morning edition: the morning read is the final read of the last session.

Yes, and it's free. The Daily Read email lands every trading morning at 6 AM ET with the session's verdict, the cuts out of line, and your watchlist if you keep one. Turn it on or off in your account's email settings; if you only signed up for the weekly newsletter, nothing changes unless you turn it on. Prices in the daily email display in your chosen currency and unit.

Every directional call the Weekly makes is graded against the USDA print once its window closes, in public, on the Scorecard page. Nothing is deleted and nothing is graded with hindsight. The current 90-day hit rate is on that page; it changes every week, so it is not quoted here.

USDA cutout and cut prices: on the board the same evening USDA publishes. The afternoon close files from about 4 PM ET and the board keeps picking up prints until it settles around 5:30 PM. Weekly reports (retail features, drop value, variety meats): on the board the day USDA publishes them. FX: live from public exchange feeds. Full methodology is on the About page.

Set a target price and a direction, above or below. The alert fires the first time the daily USDA close meets or crosses your threshold: "above" at any print at or over the target, "below" at any print at or under. You get one email when it hits, then the alert disarms. That is deliberate, so a cut that oscillates around your number does not email you every day. Re-arm it from your watchlist to keep tracking. The scan runs once per business day after USDA's afternoon print.

Yes. Today's Read, Cut Prices, Movers, and the Chart are all built to work on a phone, and the species and currency pickers live in the Account menu on small screens. The deepest tables are still easier on a desktop, which is where most buyers work.

Search it. If USDA AMS publishes it on a daily beef or pork report, or on the poultry reports for chicken and turkey, it is on the board. A non-IMPS spec or a private-label cut will not be, because USDA never reports it. Write us at support@meatread.com and we'll tell you whether the closest reported cut tracks yours closely enough to price off, or whether you should stay with your existing source. We will say so plainly if it's the latter.

One account per person. Each subscription is one seat, and the sign-in link is personal; the Terms say so, and the watchlist and alerts are tied to the account anyway. For a desk, email support@meatread.com and we'll set up a team plan: one invoice, individual logins, each seat with its own watchlist and alerts.